Carla Bruni-Sarkozy impressed fashion experts with her restrained glamour Wednesday as the French presidential couple arrived in Britain.

     LONDON, March 27, 2008  - President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Carla
Bruni-Sarkozy impressed fashion experts with her restrained glamour Wednesday as the French presidential couple arrived in Britain for a state visit.
   There was agreement that she looked demure and dignified in a high-necked
grey coat, matching hat, black belt and black gloves, on the day a nude
photograph from her modelling days appeared in some British newspapers.
   "My first impression was that it was kind of Jackie Kennedy meets Madeline
the little French schoolgirl," said Lucy Yeomans, editor of upmarket British
fashion and lifestyle magazine Harper's Bazaar.
   "It was very elegant, but very, very safe, with all the accesories, like
the gloves. I also thought it was eerily reminscent of the young Lady Diana
when she was trying to do everything correctly."
   "It was very beautifully tailored and in its way, very on-trend, but it was
also a little bit nun-like," Yeomans added. "I don't know whether it was
because she knows that there is this naked picture of her around."
   The editor of Vogue.com, Dolly Jones, said that with media attention
focused on the new French first lady, Bruni-Sarkozy, 40, was "perfectly
demure... her tiny matching hat and rounded collar an elegant reference to
Jackie O".
   "She really looks the part, while the sober grey wool fabric of her coat dress blends into the British weather. She's certainly not trying to upstage anybody. That seems to be the message."
   Image consultant Angela Marshall said the outfit, set off with black flat pumps to lessen the height difference with her husband as well as Queen
Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, was an attempt to strike the right note.
   "I would say that it is very simple, very elegant and she is trying to play
it safe," she said. "The only comment I would make is that although it is
fashionable, I would have preferred to have seen her hair up."
   A number of British tabloid newspapers on Wednesday published a
full-frontal nude photograph of her dating from 1993, to be sold by Christie's
auction house. Presidential aides declined to comment on the image.

AFP